Fort Lauderdale Gate Pros: Custom Iron, Aluminum & Automatic Driveway Gates for Homes and Businesses
Residential and commercial gate design, fabrication, automation and service across Broward County. Marine-grade aluminum, wrought iron, ornamental steel, wood and composite gates built for salt air and hurricane season by a licensed, insured crew.
- Licensed & Insured
- 15+ Years in Broward County
- Free On-Site Estimate
- Se Habla Español
Our Gate Services in Fort Lauderdale, FL
Driveway Gates
Driveway gates change how a Fort Lauderdale property reads from the street more than any other single thing you can add to it, and choosing one is mostly a question of what the site will physically allow rather than which photograph you liked. Before anybody talks about scrollwork we measure four things: the clear opening width, the driveway depth from the sidewalk to where a car actually stops, the slope both across and along the drive, and what electrical power exists anywhere near the street.
Wrought Iron Gates
Wrought iron gates are the entrance most Fort Lauderdale homeowners picture first, and in this climate they are also the ones most often built badly, because heavy steel hides its sins for about three seasons before it starts confessing. We forge and weld custom wrought iron and ornamental iron driveway gates in our own Broward County shop from solid bar and heavy-wall tube, not the thin decorative stock that dents if a bumper looks at it sideways.
Garage & Parking Gates
Garage and parking gates are a different problem from a driveway gate, and on the condominium-heavy stretch of coast Fort Lauderdale occupies they are frequently the more pressing one. A parking structure is the softest point on most buildings: it is the one opening that has to admit vehicles, it is usually out of sight from the street, and it is shared by dozens or hundreds of people who all have a different view on how long to wait for it to close behind them.
Ornamental Steel Gates
Ornamental steel gates give you the look and strength of wrought iron at a lower price and a lower weight, which makes them the practical middle of the Fort Lauderdale market. Where traditional iron is solid bar, ornamental steel is tubular section: less mass on the hinges, less load on the operator, and a cheaper gate to automate and keep automated over twenty years.
Aluminum Gates
Aluminum gates are the correct answer for most waterfront and near-water property in Fort Lauderdale, and we say that as a shop that makes more margin selling steel. Aluminum does not rust.
Wood Gates
Wood gates look spectacular in Fort Lauderdale and fail quickly when they are built the way most people build them, which is a solid timber frame trying to carry its own weight across a driveway. South Florida is a genuinely hostile place to be a wooden gate: driving rain for half the year, humidity that never really drops, UV that chews a finish off in two summers, and termites that read an untreated bottom rail as an invitation.
Sliding Gates
Sliding gates are the right call on any Fort Lauderdale property that does not have driveway depth to spare, which describes a great many of them. A slide gate uses zero driveway length, so you can pull off the street and stop without needing a clear arc in front of the car, and it presents far less surface to a gust than a hinged leaf does, which matters on a barrier island or a canal-front lot with nothing upwind of it.
Swing Gates
Swing gates are the classic entrance and still the right choice on any Fort Lauderdale property with enough driveway to give them room. They cost less to install than a slide gate, there is no track to keep clear of sand and salt, and a matched pair of leaves opening ahead of you is simply a better arrival than anything else you can do to a driveway.
Cantilever Gates
Cantilever gates carry their own weight on post-mounted roller assemblies, so nothing touches the ground and there is no track to clog, flood or bend. In Fort Lauderdale that is not a technical curiosity, it is often the deciding factor, because a great many driveways here sit low enough to hold water after a downpour and some of them take salt water on a king tide.
Bi-Fold & Vertical Pivot Gates
Bi-fold and vertical pivot gates exist to solve the two problems that come up constantly on Fort Lauderdale lots: not enough room, and not enough patience. A bi-fold gate splits each leaf into two hinged panels that fold back on themselves, needing roughly half the swing arc of a conventional gate and clearing the opening in a few seconds rather than fifteen.
Automatic Gate Operators
Automatic gate operators decide whether your entrance is a pleasure or a daily irritation, and this is the component most often specified wrong. We install and service LiftMaster, DoorKing, FAAC, Ramset, Viking and Nice operators across Fort Lauderdale, and the first question on any job is not brand, it is class.
Access Control & Keypads
Gate access control is what turns a motor into a working entrance, and getting it right comes down to being honest about who actually needs to get in. On a Fort Lauderdale house that usually means the family on remotes or a phone app, a keypad code for the cleaner and the pool guy, a rotating code for deliveries, a code for the yacht service tech if you are on water, and an exit loop so nobody hunts for a remote to leave.
Telephone Entry Systems
Telephone entry systems are how a visitor gets through a gate they have no code for, and in Broward County they are standard equipment on every gated community, condominium and HOA of any size. A caller scrolls a directory or dials a code, the unit rings the resident on their phone, and the resident presses a digit to open the gate.
Safety Sensors & UL 325 Compliance
Gate safety sensors are the difference between an automatic gate and a two-thousand-pound hazard on a timer, and UL 325 compliance is not a marketing phrase, it is the standard your operator was built and listed to. Every automated gate needs a primary means of entrapment protection built into the operator, usually inherent force sensing that reverses the gate when it meets resistance, plus a secondary independent means, typically photo eyes or a contact safety edge.
Gate Motors & Solar Power
Solar gate motors solve two Fort Lauderdale problems at once: plenty of properties have no power at the gate, and when a hurricane takes the grid down the entrance still has to work. A solar package is a DC operator, a battery bank and a panel sized to the site, running entirely independent of the house.
Custom & Estate Gates
Custom and estate gates are one-off builds, drawn for your opening and welded to your dimensions rather than adapted from a catalogue panel, and in a city with the waterfront property Fort Lauderdale has, this is the work our shop enjoys most. Arched and radius crowns, hand-forged scrollwork, cast finials and spear tops, laser-cut steel panels, monograms and house numbers integrated into the design, mixed material gates pairing ornamental steel with ipe or composite infill, and matched pedestrian gates so the whole frontage reads as one piece.
Security Fencing & Perimeter
Security fencing is the other ninety percent of a perimeter, and a serious gate hung in a weak fence line is theatre. We design and install perimeter systems for Fort Lauderdale marinas, boatyards, distribution yards, self-storage, gated communities, condominium properties and homes where the gate is only worth having if the rest of the line holds up.
Commercial & Industrial Gates
Commercial and industrial gates in Fort Lauderdale are a different trade from residential work, and the difference is cycle count and salt. A house gate opens maybe a dozen times a day.
Welding & Gate Fabrication
Welding and gate fabrication is the shop behind everything else on this site, and it is the reason we can say yes to work other gate companies have to order in and wait for. We run our own metal shop in Broward County with MIG and TIG capability, plasma cutting, a press brake and the jigs to build a gate that comes out genuinely square rather than close enough.
Emergency Gate Service
Emergency gate service is the call you make when the gate is stuck open and the property is wide open, or stuck closed with a car in the street behind it. We run emergency response across Fort Lauderdale and Broward County, and the first thing we do on the phone is walk you through securing the situation: where the manual release is on your particular operator, how to disengage it so the gate can be moved by hand, and how to physically secure the leaf so it is not swinging loose in the wind while you wait for us.
Fort Lauderdale Gate Pros is a licensed and insured gate contractor with over 15 years of experience designing, fabricating, automating and servicing driveway gates for residential and commercial properties in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Our work covers custom wrought iron and ornamental steel gates, marine-grade powder-coated aluminum gates, cedar and composite gates on welded steel frames, vinyl and PVC gates, single and dual swing gates, roller and cantilever slide gates, bi-fold and vertical-pivot gates for short waterfront lots, estate entrances, security fencing, parking barrier arms and full in-house welding and fabrication. On the electronics side we install and repair automatic gate operators from LiftMaster, DoorKing, FAAC and Ramset, plus telephone entry systems, keypads, card and fob readers, video intercoms, loop detectors, photo-eye sensors, solar and battery packages and Knox box fire-department access.
Two things decide how long a gate lasts in this city, and neither of them is the design. The first is salt. Fort Lauderdale has miles of Atlantic beach and hundreds of miles of navigable canal, and airborne chloride reaches well inland on the sea breeze, so we specify hot-dip galvanizing under the powder coat on steel and marine-grade alloy with stainless fasteners on aluminum rather than treating either as an upgrade. The second is wind, because Broward County sits in Florida's High-Velocity Hurricane Zone and a gate leaf is a sail on two hinges. We build in 14-gauge and 16-gauge tube depending on span and operator load, set posts deep in concrete sized for the overturning load, and hang hardware rated for the leaf rather than for the invoice. Every operator is set up to UL 325 safety compliance with the correct Class I through Class IV classification, entrapment protection wired and tested, and force limits dialed to where they belong. Licensed, insured and bonded, International Door Association member, written workmanship warranty on everything we install.
What Fort Lauderdale Customers Say
We are on a canal and our last gate rusted through in four years. These guys galvanized the steel before coating it and used stainless hardware throughout. Three summers in and there is not a mark on it.
Short driveway, sidewalk right at the property line, and two other companies told us a gate was impossible. They measured the back-run and put in a slide gate that clears perfectly. Clean work.
They drew up elevations for our HOA architectural committee before fabricating anything, which saved us a rejection. Gate went in on schedule and the columns match the house exactly.
Our operator died in the middle of storm season. They came out the same afternoon, found a fried control board rather than selling us a new motor, and added a battery backup we should have had all along.
Wide opening for the horse trailer and no power anywhere near the road. They sized a solar and battery package properly and showed us the math. It has never once run out of charge.
Our board asked for a written safety report on both entrances. They found photo eyes that had never been aligned and force limits turned all the way up by a previous company. Fixed both and documented it.
Why Fort Lauderdale Chooses Fort Lauderdale Gate Pros
- ✓Over 15 years installing and automating gates across Broward County
- ✓In-house metal shop — we weld and powder coat our own gates rather than drop-shipping them
- ✓Marine-grade aluminum and hot-dip galvanized steel specified for coastal salt air
- ✓Waterfront, canal-front and marina-community gate work is a specialty, not a sideline
- ✓Every operator wired to UL 325 with photo eyes, loop detectors and tested entrapment protection
- ✓Licensed, insured and bonded, with a written workmanship warranty
- ✓Se habla español
About Fort Lauderdale Gate Pros in Fort Lauderdale, FL
Fort Lauderdale Gate Pros has spent over 15 years designing, building, automating and rescuing driveway gates across Fort Lauderdale and Broward County. We started as a small metal shop taking on whatever welding came through the door and grew the way a gate should be built: slowly, square, and on a foundation that goes deep enough. Today we handle custom wrought iron entrance gates, marine-grade aluminum and ornamental steel, cantilever slide gates, parking barrier arms and access control for gated and marina communities, and we still run every job with our own crews rather than handing your property to a subcontractor you have never met.
What sets us apart is the part you only find out about in year five. We fabricate to your opening and your slope, hot-dip galvanize or blast and powder coat inside and out, use stainless hardware on anything within reach of salt air, and set posts deep in concrete so the gate never drifts. Every operator is wired to UL 325 with photo eyes, loop detectors and tested entrapment protection, and we size the operator class to the leaf weight instead of to whatever was on the truck. In a city where half the addresses are on water and every one of them is in a hurricane zone, building to the environment is not an upgrade, it is the job.
From wrought iron and ornamental steel to aluminum, wood, vinyl, sliding, swing, cantilever and bi-fold gates, plus operators, keypads, telephone entry, safety sensors, solar power, security fencing and emergency service, Fort Lauderdale Gate Pros is one phone call for an entrance that looks sharp and works every single time you pull up to it. Licensed, insured and bonded, International Door Association member, written workmanship warranty on every install. Se habla español, and the on-site estimate is always free.
How It Works
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1. Design & quote
We come out, measure the opening, shoot the slope, check the seawall setback if you are on water, and find out what power actually exists at the gate. You get an itemized written quote with the material gauge and the finish system spelled out.
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2. Fabrication & prep
We cut and weld the gate in our own shop, blast it, galvanize or prime it and powder coat inside and out, then set posts in concrete and trench conduit for the operator, the loops and the access control.
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3. Install & automate
We hang the gate, mount and align the operator, wire the keypad, exit loop and photo eyes, then program remotes and set travel and force limits to UL 325 before anybody drives through it.
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4. Test & hand off
We cycle the gate dozens of times, test entrapment protection against a real obstruction, walk you through the manual release and the battery backup, and leave the manuals with you instead of in the truck.
Commercial, Marina & Gated-Community Gate Services in Fort Lauderdale
We install, automate and maintain commercial gates for gated communities, HOAs, condominium and marina properties, boatyards, self-storage, distribution yards and municipal sites across Broward County. Heavy cantilever slide gates on hot-dip galvanized frames, Class III and Class IV operators, telephone entry with directory codes, card and fob readers, loop detectors, barrier arms and Knox box fire-department access, all wired to UL 325 and kept inspection-ready so residents, tenants and trucks keep moving.
- ✓Gated communities & HOAs
- ✓Marinas, boatyards & waterfront properties
- ✓Condominium & apartment entrances
- ✓Distribution yards & self-storage
- ✓Cantilever slide gates & barrier arms
- ✓Telephone entry, card readers & keypads
- ✓Class III/IV operators wired to UL 325
- ✓Scheduled maintenance & 24-hour service
Service Areas
Fort Lauderdale Gate Pros serves Fort Lauderdale, FL and surrounding communities including:
Recent Projects Across Broward County
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a driveway gate cost in Fort Lauderdale?
Most automated driveway gates here run from the mid-$4,000s to around $15,000 installed, and material drives the spread more than design does. A single marine-grade aluminum swing gate on a modest lot sits at the bottom. A dual-swing ornamental iron gate with keypad, exit loop, photo eyes and battery backup sits in the middle. A custom estate entrance on a waterfront property with hot-dip galvanizing, underground operators and integrated columns sits at the top. We measure on site and quote in writing, because slope, setback and available power move the number more than the pickets do.
Will a gate rust living this close to the water?
Untreated steel absolutely will, and faster than owners expect. Airborne salt does not stop at the beach; it carries several miles inland on the prevailing easterly, so a canal-front house in Rio Vista and a house four blocks off Federal Highway are both in a corrosive environment. Steel rusts from inside the tube where nobody looks, so we blast to bare metal, hot-dip galvanize where exposure warrants it, then powder coat inside and out with sealed weep points. On direct-oceanfront properties we normally recommend marine-grade aluminum instead, because aluminum simply does not rust.
Do gates in Broward County need hurricane engineering?
Broward sits inside Florida's High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, and while a driveway gate is not a building envelope component the way an impact window is, the posts, footings and anchorage still have to carry real wind load. A wide solid privacy leaf is a sail, which is why we frequently split a wide opening into a dual swing, perforate a solid panel, or move the design to a slide gate. We permit through the Fort Lauderdale building department where the work requires it and stay on site for the inspection.
Can you build a gate for a canal-front or marina property?
Yes, and it is a large part of what we do. Waterfront lots bring their own constraints: seawall setbacks, limited driveway depth between the street and the house, a boat trailer or service truck that needs a wider opening than a car does, and salt exposure on every face. We usually end up with a slide gate or a dual swing in marine-grade aluminum, stainless hardware throughout, sealed operator enclosures mounted above expected flood level, and conduit planned before the driveway is finished.
What happens to my gate when the power goes out?
With a battery backup it keeps cycling, usually long enough to get through a storm day. Without one you pull the manual release and move the gate by hand. Battery backup runs a few hundred dollars installed and we fit it as standard here rather than as an upsell, because hurricane season is precisely when nobody wants to be standing in the rain wrestling a heavy leaf open by hand.
How long does a gate install take from order to working gate?
For a fabricated gate, plan on three to six weeks from signed quote to a working entrance. Roughly two to four of those weeks are shop time for cutting, welding, blasting and coating, and the finishing system is the part that cannot be rushed without ruining it. Site work is normally one to three days: setting posts, trenching conduit, cutting the exit loop, hanging the gate and commissioning the operator. Custom estate work with columns and lighting runs longer and we give you the real date rather than an optimistic one.